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arXiv:2601.13554

Asymptotic Scaling of Precision Limits in Continuous Gaussian Quantum Metrology

Kazuki Yokomizo, Aashish A. Clerk, Yuto Ashida

quant-phSubmitted Jan 20, 2026• Announced Jan 21, 2026• 0 citations• Revised Aug 27, 2026 (v2)

v1 · Jan 20, 2026 v2 · Aug 27, 2026

Abstract

Continuous quantum metrology holds promise for realizing high-precision sensing by harnessing information progressively carried away by the radiation quanta emitted into the environment. Despite recent progress, a comprehensive understanding of the precision limits of continuous metrology with bosonic systems is currently lacking. We develop a general theoretical framework for quantum metrology with multimode free bosons under continuous Gaussian measurements. We derive analytical expressions for the asymptotic growth rates of the global quantum Fisher information (QFI) and the environmental QFI, which quantify the total information encoded in the joint system-environment state and the information accessible from the emitted radiation, respectively. We show that the asymptotic growth rates of the global and environmental QFIs coincide in a class of continuous sensing protocols with dissipative system-environment couplings, while they are in general qualitatively distinct when a system-environment coupling exhibits no damping. We further derive bounds on these quantities, showing that while a quadratic scaling with the number of modes is attainable, the precision scales at most linearly with time and a meaningful energy resource. To illustrate our findings, we analyze several concrete setups, including coupled cavity arrays and trapped particle arrays. While a local setup yields a linear scaling with resources, a globally coupled setup can achieve a quadratic scaling in terms of the mode number. Furthermore, we demonstrate that a nonreciprocal setup can leverage the non-Hermitian skin effect to realize an exponentially enhanced global QFI. Notably, however, this enhancement cannot be reflected in the environmental QFI, highlighting a fundamental distinction between the information stored within the joint state and the information radiated into the environment. ...

Comments: 32 pages, 10 figures

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The fundamental metrological limits of temperature sensing in open quantum systems remain largely unresolved, particularly regarding the role of non-Gaussian quantum resources. In this letter, we establish analytic bounds on the quantum Fisher information (QFI) for temperature estimation using non-Gaussian states undergoing dissipative bosonic evolution. By focusing on the short-time regime governed by a time-local master equation, we derive precise scaling laws that elucidate when and how non-Gaussian probes decisively outperform Gaussian states under identical energy constraints. Our analysis uncovers a distinct linear-in-time QFI enhancement unique to Fock states, in contrast to the inherently weaker, quadratic scaling of Gaussian probes. These theoretical insights are substantiated through exact numerical simulations and mapped onto experimentally accessible platforms such as circuit QED. Our results not only clarify the quantum thermometric advantage of non-Gaussianity but also chart a realistic pathway toward harnessing it in noisy quantum technologies.

Understanding how thermal fluctuations modify or suppress quantum-enhanced sensing is a central problem in quantum metrology. Closely related questions arise in quantum thermodynamics, particularly regarding the relation between the work induced by a signal and the information acquired by a sensor. Here, we establish general relations among the sensitivity of thermal quantum states, as quantified by different quantum Fisher information metrics, their temperature dependence, and the work induced by a unitary signal. We further show that, at high temperature, all monotone QFI metrics coincide to leading order with a universal quantity that can be expressed as the variance of a simple observable and itself defines a lesser-known QFI metric. This emergent uniqueness is reminiscent of the uniqueness of classical Fisher information in information geometry. In continuous-variable systems, the infinite-temperature limit is finite and generically non-zero for quadratic Gaussian signals, while it diverges for higher-degree signals. Remarkably, for any purely quadratic signal generator, the infinite-temperature QFI is at least twice the zero-temperature SLD QFI or, equivalently, at least eight times the ground-state variance of the generator. Consequently, the Cramér--Rao lower bound on the estimator variance is reduced by at least a factor of two. We illustrate these results using harmonic chains of bosonic modes relevant to trapped-ion platforms and quantum field-theoretic models.

Quantum metrology refers to the use of quantum resources in parameter-estimation protocols, aiming at enhancing its precision. The quantum Fisher information is a key quantity in this context, setting the ultimate achievable precision with respect to available resources, such as the total time of the protocol. In this work, we report a scheme where the quantum Fisher information features an exponential scaling with the protocol duration. This is achieved by performing a periodic modulation of the coupling of a quantum critical system close to the its critical value. This modulation leads to an exponential growth of the excitation number in time. Relying on the precision bound derived by Garbe et al. [L. Garbe et al., Quantum Sci. Technol. 7, 035010 (2022)], we show that the quantum Fisher information inherits this exponential time scaling, which is corroborated by numerical simulations. Finally, the impact of dissipation and finite-size effects are analyzed, showing that the exponential time scaling is robust to dissipation, although its exponent decreases for larger values of the dissipation rate. Therefore, our work illustrates the novel metrological opportunities that quantum critical systems can offer.

Frequency estimation, a cornerstone of quantum metrology, has been significantly enhanced by advanced quantum sensing strategies. However, most protocols rely either on static or time-independent encoding mechanisms, inherently limiting their achievable precision scaling, or on control strategies requiring changing the Hamiltonian and/or implementing feedback mechanisms. To overcome this, we investigate a simpler dynamical encoding protocol where the quantum oscillator is driven by a general continuous temporal frequency modulation

Ω(t) = ω_0 f(t)

. We analytically demonstrate that for a given modulation profile

f(t)

and its corresponding time-integral

F(t)

, the quantum Fisher information (QFI) scales as

\mathcal{O}(F(t)^2)

. This enhancement stems from the fact that temporal encoding fundamentally alters the mechanism of dynamical phase accumulation. Crucially, when evaluated under the energy and evolution-time constraints, this framework reveals a genuine precision enhancement over the conventional time-independent baseline. By analyzing explicit polynomial and exponential modulations, we establish that arbitrary precision scaling can be deterministically engineered, with ultimate bounds that are asymptotically saturable via optimal homodyne detection. Our framework provides a universal paradigm for exploiting time-dependent quantum control in next-generation sensors.

Quantum metrology utilizes quantum effects to reach higher-precision measurements of physical quantities compared with their classical counterparts. However, the ubiquitous decoherence obstructs its application. Recently, non-Markovian effects are shown to be effective in performing quantum optical metrology under locally dissipative environments [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 040402 (2019)]. However, the mechanism is still rather hazy. Here, we uncover the reason why forming a bound state can protect the quantumness against a dissipative ambient via the quantum Fisher information of entangled coherent states. An exact analytical expression of the quantum Fisher information in the long-encoding-time condition is derived, which reveals that the dynamics of precision can asymptotically reach the ideal-case-promised one easily when the average photon number is small. Meanwhile, the scaling exhibits a transition from the weak Heisenberg limit to the subclassical limit with increasing average photon number. Our work provides a recipe to realize ultrasensitive measurements in the presence of noise by utilizing non-Markovian effects.